Through our solutions, we provide access to millions of digital content items from the world's best providers and, using educational technology and Artificial Intelligence, enabling any organization to create its own unlimited learning ecosystem.
Currently, more than 4, 500 institutions (governments, schools, libraries, universities, companies, and startups) place their trust in Odilo, providing access to their unlimited learning platforms to more than 170 million users in over 50 countries.
Our team is truly international (19+ nationalities) with the best talent across the education, media, content, and technology sectors.
As the Country Manager - Education Business, you will have a Director role reporting to the VP of Global Education Sales, and you will be responsible for our direct and indirect sales in the South African market. You will be a key player in Odilos Global Education Business, responsible for bringing the Unlimited Learning category that Odilo is pioneering to Governments, Universities and Private K12 Schools in South Africa and across the region.
You will develop and own our commercial efforts by leading our go-to-market strategy, new sales and account management activities while strongly contributing to our marketing and product strategy for the South African and Sub-Saharan region within the Education Vertical that includes Government, Universities and Private K12 Schools.
To succeed in this role you will need to have strong leadership skills, a results-driven mindset, a strong understanding of managing complex deals with large private and public entities; multi-stakeholder management, communications, and adapt easily to new scenarios.
Our mission and vision: empower everyone to become the best version of themselves by allowing any organization to provide unlimited learning in the most frictionless, efficient and valuable way.
What you will do at ODILO:
- Hire, coach, and professionally develop our Sales team in the Education Vertical in the South African market.
- Develop a very ambitious plan to quickly amplify our sales coverage (double size in one year) and hire the best local talent in the South African market and establish the commercial launch activities.
- Support your sales team in closing business in the education, smart cities, cultural spaces, academic and digital transformation organizations.
- Work towards surpassing our revenue plans.
- Analyze regional market dynamics and geo-political risks in an effort to maximize existing successes and create new sales growth opportunities.
- Directly contribute to the most relevant opportunities in the territory exceeding $100k per deal, while creating and maintaining excellent relationships with our best customers and indirect channel partner
- As a Country Manager in the Education Vertical, you will become the biggest advocate of your market, working closely with Sales Operations, Sales Strategy, and Sales Enablement teams to define the customer segmentation and overall strategy and progress of your market and with the Marketing teams to define and execute the Marketing plan (lead generation, conferences, partnerships, etc)
- At least +7 years of complex sales experience at established SaaS companies, closing deals exceeding minimum $100k USD ARR
- At least +5 year of experience managing sales teams selling complex large-volume deals directly
- Experience developing indirect sales partners to achieve the companys objectives for closing large enterprise deals
- Has consistently achieved individual new sales targets of at least $1M USD annually
- Experience training and leading teams with different profiles (hunters and farmers)
- Experience selling software (SaaS) or learning programmes or technology or complex products with a strong technology component (Saas, Integrators of Technology, LMS systems, ERP, CRMs, Customized Technology development, etc)
- Experience selling deals in education business and comfortable working on a regular basis with Ministerial and C-Suite individuals at large academic institutions
- Expertise selling deals that require a multi-phase approach adapted to the needs of the customer with multiple stakeholders
- People you've managed still consider you a mentor and have gone on to do big things; many of them would work with you again in a heartbeat
- Experience creating a consultative selling approach with customer success at the forefront (i.e. The Challenger Customer), creating specific offers for each project
- You can demonstrate previous success adapting the sales playbook to manage a complex sales structure with different processes and sales cycles to accommodate different customer segmentations.
- Proven success executing go-to-market initiatives with a strong focus on outbound Sales and Account Based Sales.
- Ability to get involved in complex scenarios, with complex deals architecture, and work directly with prospects and customers when needed.
- Business Professional English, both written and verbal is required
- Diligent in keeping sales pipeline information accurate and up to date in company CRM.
- Willing to build an open and transparent culture in the team.
- Review CRM information daily to gain new insights
- Coach the team and build along with them a better approach.
- Brings both hunter and farmer mentality to the team. Well-organized and prepared.
- Able to work towards clear deadlines with a strong work ethic.
- Truly passionate about education and lifelong learning. A clear vision of how to create a strong proactive learning culture will be a key factor for every organization's success.
- Prior experience selling SaaS solutions to South African and/or other Governments in Africa.
- Knowledge of the education sector, digital learning and school management tools, teaching and learning methodologies, and educational legislation.
- Having experience selling with system integrators.
Working for Odilo is about being part of a lifelong learning culture, where everyone has the possibility to take on challenges and participate in the growth of the company.
But we also offer:
- A fast moving and challenging job within a mission driven company in an international, creative, and ambitious work environment.
- Unlimited learning with Odilofy, our platform with more than 3 million contents in all formats (books, audiobooks, learning experiences, movies, courses...).
- Flexible Compensation Plans: Food, Transportation, Childcare, Training and Health insurance.
- A salary commensurate with track record and experience.
- Competitive variable compensation
- Real opportunities for internal professional development.
Sounds like a mission made for you? Then we need to talk!
